Sleeper Films To Look Out For 2017

13 Sleeper Films You Need To See This Year

2017 is a year chock full of blockbusters. We’ve already had the likes of Logan and Fast & Furious 8, and still have Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2, Blade Runner 2049, Star Wars: The Last Jediand much more to look forward to. But being a real film fan also means looking beyond the big hitters, for films that may be lesser known but certainly don’t compromise on quality. The runaway success of Get Out (made with just $4.5m) was a much-needed reminder that films don’t need to cost $100m to dazzle you, so here are a selection of other under the radar films that are well worth checking out this year.

Logan Lucky

About five years ago, Steven Soderbergh announced that he would be retiring from filmmaking. Well grab an extinguisher because someone’s pants are on fire. After a spell working in TV, Soderbergh is back to the big screen with this comedy, about two brothers (Channing Tatum and Adam Driver) trying to carry out a robbery during a North Carolina Nascar race. As if the strange pairing of Tatum and Driver weren’t enticing enough, the cast also includes Daniel Craig, Riley Keough, Sebastian Stan and Katherine Waterston. Welcome back, Mr Soderbergh.

Thank You For Your Service

Amy Schumer in Trainwreck

This is very basic of us, but this will probably become known as the ‘Amy Schumer turns serious’ movie. Directed by Jason Hall, who wrote American Sniper, Thank You For Your Service is about three soldiers suffering emotional problems after returning from Iraq. It’s not actually known what role Schumer will be playing, but she’ll be alongside Miles Teller as one of the soldiers and Haley Bennett (The Girl on the Train) as his wife. American Sniper was huuuuuge, so there’s every chance this could do the same.

An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth To Power

He didn’t win the presidency but Al Gore’s first documentary, An Inconvenient Truth, won an Oscar. The sequel, ten years after the first, investigates how the fight against global warming has changed in a decade and what can be done to stop it. It got middling reviews at festivals but the fact that America now has a president who is vocally cynical about man-made climate change makes this extremely timely, which could translate to a big hit.

Three Billboards Outside Ebbing Missouri

Horrible title, but the trailer for this is exceptional. After a stumble with his first American movie, Seven Psychopaths, writer-director Martin McDonagh appears to be back to the aggressive wit he showed with In Bruges. Frances McDormand plays a mother who is furious that the local sheriff (Woody Harrelson) hasn’t solved her daughter’s murder and badgers him daily. Sounds like a grim drama, but McDonagh has filled the trailer with zingers. Nobody could deliver those better than McDormand.

Annihilation

After Ex-Machina, with its Oscar and BAFTA nominations, Alex Garland may not entirely be under the radar, but he’s not quite yet a marquee name. He is, though, someone to be very, very excited about as a maker of intelligent sci-fi. His second film as director is the story of a biologist who, following the loss of her husband, agrees to an expedition to a mysterious environmental disaster zone. She, apparently, finds something very different to what she was expecting. Natalie Portman, Oscar Isaac, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Gina Rodriguez and Tessa Thompson make up the bulk of the superb cast.

Tully

Charlize Theron in Young Adult

Jason Reitman and Diablo Cody were both once extremely hot property, mostly for their collaboration on Juno, but their careers have cooled in recent years. The addition of Charlize Theron to their reunion makes it a more exciting prospect than it might otherwise be. The last time these three worked together was on Young Adult, a sad and brutally funny comedy about ageing. The only detail on the plot is that Theron plays a mother who starts a friendship with the nanny who looks after her children at night. Do not underestimate this team’s ability to spin gold from that.

Stan and Ollie

Laurel & Hardy in The Flying Deuces

After the cult success of Filth, director John Baird has moved to something a bit more mainstream, but in his own slightly skewed way. As you’ve probably guessed, Stan and Ollie is a biopic of Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy, arguably the greatest comedy duo in cinema history. He has two enormously talent comedians playing them, with John C. Reilly as Hardy and Steve Coogan as Laurel.

Call Me By Your Name

Critics have raved about this movie at film festival screenings. Directed by Luca Guadagnino (A Bigger Splash) it tells of a romance between a 17-year-old boy (Timothee Chalamet) and a 24-year-old academic (Armie Hammer) when they stay at the same villa in Italy. It’s not the stuff worldwide hits are made of, but neither was Moonlight and look what happened there.

Under The Silver Lake

David Robert Mitchell’s It Follows is one of the most inventive horror movies of the decade, so there’s a lot of pressure on his follow-up. He’s nabbed a starrier cast for his LA-set ‘neo-noir’ thriller, with Andrew Garfield, Riley Keough and Girls’ Zosia Mamet among the ensemble. There are no more details than that, but just the fact that it’s Mitchell is enough reason to keep an eye on it.

Mute

Duncan Jones’ last film, Warcraft, was a noble failure – he clearly felt passionately about the material – but a failure nonetheless. That’s no reason to write off a director with the talent to make 2009’s Moon, so excitement is still high for his next project. Mute is more on a Moon scale. Set in Berlin, 40 years in the future, it follows a mute bartender (Alexander Skarsgard) as he searches for his missing girlfriend in the bustling city. Jones calls it a “spiritual sequel” to Moon. Whether that means there will be any actual connection in the story remains to be seen.

The Big Sick

Picked up by Amazon for $12 million at Sundance (it will be in UK cinemas in July), The Big Sick is written by Silicon Valley actor Kumail Nanjiani and tells a story inspired by his real-life marriage. It tackles the difficulties of an interracial, inter-religion relationship (Nanjiani’s character is Muslim and of Pakistani descent; his wife is a white Christian) and what happens when one of the couple gets very, very ill. And it tells that in a very, very funny way!

mother!

For his first film since 2014’s Noah, Darren Aronofsky is going back to the dark psychology of films like Pi and Black Swan. Details are thin on the ground but the logline is that this is about a couple whose relationship is put under strain when uninvited guests come to their home. The cast includes Jennifer Lawrence, Javier Bardem, Michelle Pfeiffer, Domnhall Gleeson, Ed Harris and Kristen Wiig. What a combination! The fact that it spells its title with a lower-case m leads us to believe, for no particular reason, that this will be weird. Pfeiffer has said that though she didn’t understand it the first time she read it she still immediately loved it.

The Disaster Artist

If you’ve ever seen the film The Room by Tommy Wiseau then you know what it is to stare in the face of madness. It’s a film so bad that even though it was released, to absolutely no fanfare whatsoever in 2003, it still sells out screenings across the world and is worshipped by its fans (if not for the reasons Wiseau likely initially hoped). This is the story of how it came to be made. It’s directed by James Franco, who also plays Wiseau. He’s… let’s be kind and say uneven as a director, but Franco has the mind of a weirdo and so does Wiseau, so this could be a great match.